ARTHUR NUMAN was part of the Dutch colony that brought a new, swashbuckling dimension to Scottish football in the summer of 1998.

But the former Rangers star believes few, if any, of his countrymen like Gio van Bronckhorst, Michael Mols or Ronald de Boer – all of whom followed Dick Advocaat to Ibrox – would have done so if Celtic hadn’t been around to provide genuine competition.

Now the situation is reversed and the former Holland captain believes the Scottish game has been devalued by Rangers’ drop into the fourth tier to such an extent the days of genuine world-class players being attracted to Glasgow are gone forever.

Numan said: “If Celtic had not been in the division we would have thought twice about signing for Rangers.

“Celtic are having the same problem now – a lot of players are thinking, ‘Hmm, moving to Scotland? There’s only one team and that’s Celtic’.

“Automatically they’re going to win the league, no disrespect to the other teams. Every year in my time here someone said they could compete with Rangers and Celtic – not in a million years.

“Moneywise you can’t compete. They have the biggest squads and if a player gets injured they can bring someone else straight in. Of course there’s always a spell where another team gets a result against Rangers or Celtic but in the long term they always win the league.”

Numan also insisted winning the championship without beating their greatest rivals wouldn’t have meant as much to the Rangers players in his era. He said: “It would have felt less of an achievement.”

Although he feels his former club’s pain at having to start from the bottom again – and understands their anger at not being involved in meaningful talks over reconstruction – Numan believes the one silver lining for Rangers is the number of talented youngsters they’ll be able to bring through.

He said: “You have one thing on your mind the whole year – especially the Rangers players – you want to win the league and go to the Second Division.

“Now they have to start all over again and that’s not what you want as a player, playing the same teams next season. Rangers want to go back to the SPL and hopefully they can do that in the next three years.

“For a lot of the boys at 18 and 19 it’s all new and a challenge. They’ve gone from playing for the Under-20s at Murray Park in front of 20 people.

“Then all of a sudden you’re playing at Ibrox in front of 50,000. But it’s a fantastic experience for them because two years ago they didn’t expect to have this opportunity.

“The players now know they have a better chance to make it to the first team than eight or nine years ago.

“Invest in youth and prepare them for making their debut for the first team.”

Rangers are looking at the possibility of playing in some sort of European League and Numan believes the Dutch would embrace the idea. He said: “It would be a very interesting league because you could have top teams from Scotland, Holland, Belgium and maybe other nations like Denmark.

“There would be a question about the difficulty and expense of fans travelling to away matches but it would be great for fans in Scotland to see their team playing against the likes of Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord and Anderlecht.

“I see it in Holland as well. Money-wise we can’t compete with England or Spain. If a player is good enough he will always move abroad. We have become like a pool of talent for the big guns.

“You have to find a way to make things interesting and for people to see their team competing at the highest level.

“It would also give the teams who are not involved the chance to win the domestic league – and it would be the same in Scotland.”